


Animal Instincts

by voidlightCalliope



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: (SERIOUSLY), Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Baking, But Mostly Hurt, Dubious Morality Plagg, Dysfunctional Family, F/F, F/M, Food as a Metaphor for Lots of Things, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Healing, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Intrusive Thoughts, Major Introspection on the Darker Side of Plagg, Mental Health Issues, Mild Introspection on the Darker Side of Cataclysm, Multi, Nightmares, Paranoia, Poetry, References to Depression, Suicidal Ideation, The power of friendship, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, supportive friends, teenage angst, unhealthy eating habits
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:21:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27598160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voidlightCalliope/pseuds/voidlightCalliope
Summary: There is nothing kind in Destruction. Plagg knows this well. And he’s not above reminding others.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Alya Césaire/Nino Lahiffe, Chloé Bourgeois/Kagami Tsurugi, Plagg/Tikki (Miraculous Ladybug)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 67





	1. the start;

**Author's Note:**

> Dark and edgy, edgy and dark.
> 
> (But with fluff at the end. Maybe. Isn’t that what people stick around for?)

It’s always there.

Adrien swallows hard, feels his throat constrict.

A weight on his chest, a pounding ache in his head. It’s always there. Just below the steady beat of his heart, deep in the pit of his stomach. It’s always there.

(“You’ll get used to it, kid,” Plagg says, nonchalant, but Adrien sees the way the kwami’s eyes don’t meet his, the way that the kwami’s voice holds the smothered strains of guilt, “they all got used to it eventually.”)

And by they he means the ones before. The people who wore this ring before him.

It’s not so bad when he’s detransformed. When he’s simply himself. Adrien Agreste, at his best. [at his worst] It’s only a nuisance, nothing more. 

[he doesn’t look at his father’s retreating back and think: i could just kill you, doesn’t clench his fists and bite his tongue and try and choke down the scorch beneath his dry tongue, doesn’t think: if it wasn’t for you, mom would still be here, if it wasn’t for you, if you were just dead-]

Adrien Agreste, sweet, docile, harmless Adrien Agreste does not think of his father’s blood on his perfect hands. Adrien Agreste would never-

But Chat Noir?

(Plagg does not apologize. Adrien gives up on expecting him to. In a way, it’s almost a cruelty to expect anything so regretful from the kwami. Plagg, as a rule, does not look back. Where other kwamis mourn and weep, he turns his face. Adrien attempts to keep looking forward as well. But his eyes can only-]

Chat Noir smiles and smirks and laughs and sings and flirts and jokes.

[and hungers]

And Chat Noir feels a hollowness between his skin and his suit, where cold fabric meets warm flesh, a lacuna that grows larger every time he transforms. It would be so easy, the whispers sing cruelly in his mind, to just reach out and break everything in your way. 

Power is a disease that feeds on the ego. Adrien starves his [it was never very rich to start with] and hopes for silence. But the whispers beckon, and Plagg does nothing to smother them.

[You have the power of destruction, kid. What were you expecting? Sunshine and rainbows?]

And he didn’t ask for this. To look at the cinders left by his Cataclysm for too long, wondering what it would do if he touched something organic. [something already rotted on the inside, marrowless, something empty.] He sees akumas fly away, and imagines crushing those gossamer wings into dust, feeling their chitin under his fangs. 

The longer he stays as Chat, the worse it gets. Sometimes, the whispers grow deafening. A roaring howl of rip, tear, sunder, pull, bruise, bleed, shred, desperate voices like claws digging into his brain, screeching from his almighty attention, thinking that introspection [if even for a sick second…] is the ultimate victory, you have so much power and you don’t dare to even-

“Make it stop.” He begs, claws out, but they still dig and dig and dig. He curls in on himself. Covers his ears. Not even the ringing of his ears drowns them out. 

Plagg says he’s the best Chat Noir he’s ever had.

[In reality he’s saying: you’re the only one who won’t give in.]

  
  


*

He dreams, and there is no sweetness in it.

Cataclysm rakes white-hot through bodies. Black veins grow fat and explode with chthonic ichor, the pallid gut becomes liquid, bones turn to ash-caked gelatin. Eyes explode, blood bubbles. [He’s up to his knees in a river of darkness with no ferryman to lead him out.]

He wakes up, and the first few times, he cries.

(“Have you ever seen a cat sleep?” Plagg jokes, dark circles covered up with chalky makeup, “Well? Have you?) 

He dreams, of villains and ghosts, of things that make his saliva go sour. 

  
  


It’s only when he dreams of his mother, cold and still in his wet hands, that he begs Plagg to help him. 

[NOT HER, he screams, NOT HER, PLEASE]

(Plagg makes no promises, “...but since you’re my favorite.” and Adrien howls, tears running down his face, sobs caught in his burning throat and never dreams of his mother again, for better and for worse.)

*

He loves so much it makes Plagg scowl. 

(“Your heart’s so big there’s no room for you in it,” the kwami says.)

He loves his friends. He [loves] his father, yes he does, loves his mother, loves his life, loves himself-

He loves Ladybug. He loves her so much it hurts. Hurts so deep and sharp [like there’s a knife in his chest] that she makes the rotten parts of him go numb, dead, fixed. He’s a virus, she’s the cure, he muddles around in her beautiful gravity, and Plagg rolls his eyes.

(“Here’s a story, kid,” he says, “every Noir I’ve had ends up being the reason their Lady ends up in the ground. So if you really like this girl, I’d stay away.)

And he is a fool, proclaiming: I love her so much I’d never hurt her, could never hurt her, how could you say that I would even try to-

(“Yeah, that’s what they ALL say.”)

*

  
  


Opposites attract, Adrien supposes.

Ladybugs dance the golden skies, healing [almost] all they touch. There’s the cold murmur of Cataclysm lingering on his fingers, coils of insatiable smoke pooling off the ruins of some half-dead thing [it can’t be dead if it was never alive, he argues, the whispers relent, if only slightly] and Ladybug is looking out beside him, like sunshine after snow, staring at some distant mote of light on the horizon.

The whisper tug, scratch at his eyes, yell at him to look at the mess he just made, isn’t it beautiful, and yeah, it is, but he’s not looking at what they’re looking at, because the distant mote of light has apparently fallen on his face, and she’s looking at him now, and it’s only right to smile 

[even if you are a heinous terrible useless destructive thing?]

Yes, even if. And in the ruins of the half-dead-never-alive thing, there are flowers just waiting to sprout, and for a moment, everything is alright.

*

But even love is not enough.

In his bedroom, when he is alone, there is no sunshine-after-snow to comfort him, no friends to confide in, no warmth of the heart to bask in. There are only metal bars, cold cages, the furious whispers rising to a screech like storm gales.

“Why me?”

(“Why anyone?” Plagg remarks. A bitter, angry creature, stuck to a stupid ring, eating measly scraps of cheese, made out of fumes and shadows.)

*

“What did you eat before humans made cheese?” Adrien asks, still itching with unease beneath his newly untransformed skin. The akuma is gone. The whispers are silent. His head is light. He shouldn’t be feeling this way. But the itch lingers.

Plagg’s eyes are a dull green in the sunset’s dying light, “Do you really want to know?”

[Adrien supposes rotten cheese is better than rotten meat]

  
  
  


  
  



	2. HUNGER PANGS

  
  


[“Glutton.”] Adrien accuses.

Plagg only grins; and his teeth are sharp at the ends.

*

There is no such thing as a picky eater in the wild.

_ Glutton? _ Sure.

(“Do you know what it’s like to starve?” Plagg asks, camembert in his paws.)

_ Because he does. _

__ Fat. Mucus. Bones. Blood. Tendons. The tiniest scraps of muscle left on the carcass; sun-bleached. Carrion and garbage. Fleas and flies. When your stomach recedes in on itself, when your gaping mouth tastes like the back of your rotting teeth…

Plagg is small. He is a weevil; that burrows and creeps into the pores between cell and sinew, gnawing desperately. But he wasn’t made for these things [born to hunger, built to starve], and Cataclysm turns meaty skeletons into near tasteless ash. He chews on cinders, and tar pools where the tissue weeps with wounds. 

And that is why he  _ needs  _ his Noir. Needs something  _ bigger _ , something  _ sharper _ . Something to stalk where the shadows grow long like palm leaves; to pounce through the liquid moonlight and dig their claws into their shared prey without rendering the meat to soot. His cats are  _ hunters _ . Blades and bludgeons, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, silent and deadly - stone cold killers hungrier than he could ever be.

Adrien is different, but not that different. He’s hungry too, Plagg knows it.

[Everyone is.]

Nobody likes starving. Nobody likes crawling on their disformed belly across the ground, spit drooling out of their mouth like a waterfall,  _ fantasizing  _ about the catch that will never happen. The last meal, the one that fills the chasm inside perfectly. [IT DOES NOT EXIST, the whispers warn.]

_ “Glutton.”  _ Adrien says, so Plagg dares him.

[“How long can you go?”]

It’s pride. Vanity. It’s the way the photographers  _ know  _ and make no move to stop him. He’s already so-

He stops when he presses his fingers into the skin, and feels the jut of protruding ribs. Plagg barely hides his laughter when Adrien vomits on the floor, head hanging as all the nothing spills out of him in puddles of bile.

(“Imagine that, but for weeks. Months. Years. Decades.” Plagg cajoles, floating above his golden hair, tail brushing the waxy locks as Adrien heaves, ribs shifting and groaning, “You’d be a glutton too, kid, if you never knew when you last meal was coming around.”)

Adrien brushes his teeth till they bleed, and Plagg tells him the story of a Noir who ate themselves to death, who’d starved and starved till his bones popped out of his wiry body; who finally managed to find something dying across the edge of a snow-crusted river [who gorged and gorged on that rotting, maggoty flesh till his teeth bled too, and ended up leaking his bloated guts all over the silver grass.]

Adrien sinks his teeth [fangs] into one of Marinette’s macarons when the whispers are loud, and they whip themselves into a demented frenzy, all clamoring for the same thing: (“FEED US.”) There’s crumbs on his shirt. A waste. 

He brushes them off, to the floor, and the whispers shriek till he’s crying and red-faced with apologies. Their wails rumble in his skull, and they weep and gnash, asking him:  _ “Do you know how badly I wish I could eat again? Do you know how hungry I am?” _

He never wastes a single crumb again. The whispers are sated with that, at the least.

(Oh, and when he’s Noir-)

It’s like everything’s collapsed, the wires have gone crossed: The lens that he sees the world with goes thin and dim, like he’s a pinpoint away from tunnel vision. Akuma wings in his mouth. Chitin and goassmar in his mouth. Lymph and plasma in his mouth. Anything,  _ anything _ , to make the burning ache of starvation leave.

He eats as Noir, and almost bites down on his gloved hands, so desperate to fill himself that he feels delirious.

(“And it’s never enough, is it?)

*

He bites his tongue. Hard. Hard enough to draw blood.

Nino is saying something to him, but all he can think of is the smell of blood in his empty mouth. The rich smell of blood. His blood. The wood of the desk is hard under his cold hands. He thinks about the Noir that ate himself to death. 

[AND I WAS STILL HUNGRY.]

The desk is cold under his wooden hands. Nino is saying something, louder; and the blood in Adrien’s mouth feels like a sea, like he could open his mouth and the liquid would gush out and fill the room to the ceiling. There’s static in his ears. He’s faintly aware of how sharp his teeth feel in his mouth.

“Cool it, kid,” Plagg mouths to him, from the dark recesses of his bag.

He runs his sticky tongue over his teeth. They’re sharp. Like needles. And it’s wrong. They feel too big to be his. Too stuck in his soft gums. These are not his teeth.

Nino’s voice is a megaphone [with dead batteries inside] and he pushes what feels like a loose tooth and his mouth goes half-slack with the effort-

“May I go to the nurse’s office?” Adrien says weakly, embarrassed. 

*

The nurse leaves him in the too sterile white room for a moment.

He looks in the mirror. His teeth are the same as always. They are normal, smooth, dull human teeth. Not the kind of teeth that can dig the warm parts out of a fresh corpse. Not the kind of teeth built for turning bones into powder.

*

It takes so long to scrub his blood out of the woodgrain of the desk, that he swears he sees things moving in the dried splatters.

(“Wild imagination you’ve got there,” Plagg says, like he doesn’t see it too.)

*

Marinette, pink in the face like spring roses, asks him if he’s okay after class.    
  


[Of course. I’m not hungry at all.]

And she doesn’t question him at all, just asks him if he’d like to try one of her pastries, that they aren’t that good, they’re a little squashed because I totally forgot that I put them in my backpack, and the filling is a little too sweet-

(It tastes like home. And cherries.)

“Thank you,” Adrien says, smiling, blood still on the backs of his teeth, “thank you,” and he means it, from the bottom of his stomach [heart, his heart], “they’re perfect.”

(“They’re horrible. They don’t taste like anything at all.” Plagg complains.)

Sure, but they don’t taste like blood, which is all that matters, really, and Adrien eats two more just to see that happy smile spread wider and wider across Marinette’s shy rose-pink face, and the hunger pangs are soothed so sweetly, Plagg complains that his teeth are going to rot [again].

*

He thinks about teaching himself to cook. 

(“Making food means  _ food _ ,” Plagg says, all for it, “are you going to put cheese in it?”)

The first dish he makes, he accidently puts in sour milk. All he can taste is the putrid film stuck to the meal. The second dish, the eggs are rotten. The stench makes his nose burn. The third, the bread has gone moldy. The crust is moss-green, festering with half-alive pupae. 

All innocent mistakes, really.

But when he makes the forth and cuts his hand - and the blood leaks down?

(“Who needs to cook when you’re rich, anyways?” Plagg snickers, as Adrien washes his hands for the third time, still feeling the hot wound burn on his skin.) He feels the flesh scar and sew together, watches as the divide knits itself back into connection. He is never going to cook again. Never.

*

Marinette brings him croissants.

*

“What about baking?” Adrien offers, putting a bandaid on his hand (the memory of Alya screaming at him about germs and diseases and getting your hand cut off “because it’s infected and gross, Adrien!” still raw [like meat] in his head), “That’s not like cooking.” [nothing once-alive to beat even more not-alive, to feel sliding down your throat.”

(“Do you never give up?” Plagg whines, dreaming of a heartbeat between his teeth, but he eats the horribly burnt cookies Adrien sheepishly hands him without any fuss.)

*

“I think I am going to become a vegetarian.”

(“I draw the line at plants!” Plagg howls, rotten cheese fresh on his breath.)

  
  


*

[you understand no matter what you eat you’ll always be hungry, right?]

He nods. He knows this, the same way Plagg has always known this: to be Noir, is to be always hungering, starving, desperately clawing at your own stomach in the hope that something will leap inside and make it full.

(And this is what Plagg knows, that Adrien does not: “Ladybugs are the only thing that can fill a Black Cat’s stomach.” There is a twitch in his ears as he says it. Take it as you will.)

[OR KEEP STARVING TO DEATH.]


	3. NIGHT TERRORS

Adrien looks out at Paris from the clouds.

Purple dusk hangs heavy on the well-lit city. A sliver of pale-washed moonlight crests the tops of the tallest buildings. Starshine reflects in the surface of puddles, casting constellations where the shadows nest. There is an undeniable sort of melancholy stuck in his throat. 

Loneliness. It’s something he’s well acquainted with. 

(But just because you know somebody, doesn’t mean you have to like them.)

He looks out; and thinks of his mother. His [dead never-coming back] mother. And he thinks of his mother and thinks about his mother and no matter how hard he tries, he can’t remember what her voice sounded like.

How long would it take him to forget her completely? A year? Ten? Twenty? Would he never forget? Would he forget that he forgot her at all? Plagg was saying something to him, but it was all static to his cold ears.

How much would he give to see her again?

His heart? His mind? His soul?

[ _ someone else’s? _ ] his fingers bit into his gloved palms.

Suddenly, Hawkmoth didn’t seem to be such a terrible person after all.

(because he  _ understood _ , but just because he understood didn’t mean he had to-)

Still terrible.

Just not as terrible as before.

*

Adrien’s father: a pillar.

Adrien’s mother: a temple.

Adrien: a statue.

Chat Noir: a hammer.

*

(“Freedom is the greatest thing humans ever made.” Plagg claims.)

And there is so much freedom in Chat. So, so much freedom. Every chain, every shackle is melted away the second his claws go on. No more obligation. No more responsibility. Every duty he puts upon himself is from  _ Adrien _ , not Chat. Because Chat is  _ free _ .

He’s free when he feels the wind across his face, when he tastes like black ether of Cataclysm on his tongue. He’s free when he smells fresh-baked bread and rose perfume from the streets, when he hears the deep holy chime of the clocks striking midnight. He runs, he plays, he screams into the cool abyss of night and it screams right back with it’s quiet zephyrs. 

The whispers assure him [that silence is louder than any scream.] 

He doesn’t doubt it. Because Chat is made up of words and letters, a never-ending stream of his thoughts and wonderings spat out by an unrepentant tongue. So when he is  _ quiet? _ The air hangs heavy with it.

(he doesn’t like being quiet as Chat, because when he’s quiet, his voice cannot drown on the whispers, his puns and pestering are the only buffer between the cruel hymns of Noirs six feet under and nine lives down, his confidence and bravado muffle shrieks and sobs of hunters and hedonists and hanged men, there is no lacuna to separate him and  _ them,  _ and the space between sentences becomes a minefield of implications, each breath and stutter is a weakness in the wall he’s created to protect himself, a weakness begging to be chipped apart and pulled at until it all comes tumbling down…)

*

When the villains tell him to shut up, it’s a victory even the whispers can enjoy.

When Ladybug tells him to shut up, his smile feels like it’s pulling his face apart as slow as it possibly can.

[she doesn’t mean it.]

But if she doesn’t mean it, why does she scowl and frown and get that angry little pull to her own face, that irritated wrinkle that just screams:  _ you are so annoying, Chat, why do I even put up with you? _

Adrien swears he never had these insecurities before.

He knows he never had them before.

(“Perk of the job,” Plagg laughs.)

*

Confidence is everything.

[No.] the whispers snap as he tries to sleep, [Confidence is the fool’s demise. Confidence tells you not to double check, to shut your eyes before opening them ten more times, to trust that the snare will not break, that the prey is good and truly dead, that the thing hunting you stands no chance. Confidence is a rope to hang yourself with.]

“Confidence,” a fellow model says to him, smearing cold makeup over the areas where their skin breaks into purple bruised plum-flesh, “is the rope you hang everyone else with.” and he watches them go from puffy eyes and a running nose and sallow skin to a smile that makes the stars seem dull and beauty like a golden sunset. And Adrien can’t help (like everyone else) to fall into the model’s illusion, their delusion brought to life, a power fantasy drawn onto reality with dark lipstick and a few careful words.

[so Adrien paints himself a perfect picture, where his family is happy and his mother is still by his side, and pretends that it’s more than just a desperate dream. And it helps. It really does. It really really does. And if he tells himself that it does enough times, the words will go all funny in his mouth and in his head, and it’ll be true, mostly.]

“Confidence,” a photographer muses, running a hand through their barley-colored hair, “can turn a beggar into a King.”

[So alley cat Chat walks like he’s got the weight of a solid gold crown on his head and nobody can tell him otherwise.]

“Confidence,” Nino says, “is when you play a song and you  _ just know  _ nothing can stop you.”

“Confidence,” Alya says, “is when you know you’re right, and nothing can change that.”

“Confidence,” Chloe says, “is being utterly, perfectly above everyone else and  _ knowing it _ .”

“Confidence,” Marinette says, “is - uh - well, when you’re sure of yourself. When you’re sure that you can do it, even if - if it seems really hard at first, you still know that you  _ can,  _ and you don’t doubt yourself.”

[Adrien likes that one the most. He doesn’t know why. He really doesn’t. He really really doesn’t.]

(“Just because you say something doesn’t make it true,” Plagg whines, eating cheese with a disturbing amount of gusto, green eyes narrow with some unusual emotion Adrien doesn’t have the energy to decipher, “and just because you keep pretending like you don’t like her, doesn’t make it true either.)

[I have no idea what you’re saying] the whispers agree.

(“You’re an idiot.” Plagg pauses, wiping cheese off his face, “No, you’re  _ all  _ idiots.”)

*

Sometimes they agree. 

Mostly they don’t.

Who is he talking about?

Adrien doesn’t know.

He really really really doesn’t know.

*

His dreams are the worst.

Because his dreams aren’t dreams, they’re realities: poor fool’s pasts all wrapped up in a shroud of his own fears and futilities. They’re darkness-drenched, wake-up-in-a-cold-sweat horror stories.

[ _...and I was about to die, right then, there was nothing left below my stomach, just lines and strands of my body, there were already flies - and the buzzards, oh, the red-necked, dirty-feathered buzzards - creeping towards my half-corpse, ready to return me to the clay, but then there was a vision in my eyes, a gnat with green eyes yelling at me to to put my claws out and scratch my way out of my muddy tomb, to fight, to fight, to fight, but I died. I died. I died, and the gnat watched as the animals turned me to dust.] _

__ (“Plagg, you didn’t-”)

[“My lady,” I cried, “my lady,” and she was dead, stained scarlet, spiderwebs of blood across her beautiful face. And I had killed her. I had dug my fangs and claws into the unforgiving loam of the gnarled ground and closed a fist around her pale neck. Pushed inwards till she fell apart from the inside out, till she became wormspit and crowfood.]

[I am a horrible creature that deserves no sympathy at all. I took his tiny jeweled brooch and crushed it into crystals and powder. I ground my heels into that powder and laughed as I watched the horror come over his face. I laughed even harder when he began to cry. There was a little creature at my horrible boots, and it was a kwami, who deserved nothing I gave them at all. I laughed, then I cried, and I bared my neck so that they could cut my head from the shoulders. And I deserved it. You will deserve it too.]

[A flash of red-green light, then Cataclysm exploding across the orange sky.]

(“Plagg.”)

[I want to fade away. I want to be like one of the Fox’s glorious illusions. I want to serve my stupid litttle purpose, whatever it is, and fade into a million sparkling shards of miraculous sunlight. I want my ghost to haunt my Lady for the rest of her life, and when she dies, I want her to suffer like I did when she tore out my heart and made me eat the bitter damn thing in front of her face.]

[Death would be too good for me.]

[Green rain fell in trembling sheets outside; great thundering droplets that sparkled like liquid diamonds as they fell and shattered into millions of rainbow-colored tears. The rain fell - and fell - unhesitating and furious - and fell till the once dry and pale earth crusted with a foam of voluptuous mud and the buds and leaves and stems nestled within the soil sparkled with raindrops. The sky was a thin, hazy grey, except for where the dark clouds smeared around the maroon sun.You held ladybugs in your claws, and no matter how hard you tried, you always ended up tearing their delicate little wings off.]

[No matter what I do, I am just a terrible person. Plagg doesn’t tell me otherwise. Because he’s a terrible person - thing - too. We are two terrible things stuck trying to tear each others throat out for the rest of eternity and nothing will ever change that. We will keep going and going and going until one of us wins. And no matter what I do, I will never win. The moment I put that ring on, I doomed myself to playing this game. And my luck is so so so terrible.]

[The life of the Black Cat is the life of someone who always deserves what they get. What do they get? Nothing. And then some. And you’d think the  _ then some _ would be better, but it isn’t. It never is. It makes the nothing seem like paradise. But don’t forget, you deserve it. You always do.]

And Adrien wakes up every time, sweating, trembling, cold in every limb, the visions still swirling around in his mind.

His dreams are terrible. [And so is he.]


	4. minor respite

[in the land of the dead, there is an ocean of salt with no end, that bakes under the eternally watching eye of a white sun.]

Adrien Agreste, born and raised to be the best, sits with his head between his knees, dust raining down from his golden hair. He’s missing a tooth, his bones are fractured, his ankle is twisted. He closes his eyes, and the black infinity that spirals out before him makes his heart tremor. 

Ladybug - Ladybug has it under control. [she doesn’t need him], Ladybug has the akuma under control, and soon he’ll be just fine, really, because she’ll use her Lucky Charm and all the bad juju that landed him here, bleeding to death will be washed away in a shiny torrent of ladybugs.

“Plagg.” He wheezes.

The kwami does not answer him. He can’t see the kwami at all.

He’s never been in so much pain.

(He still has his Cataclysm left.)

“Plagg,  _ please _ help.”

He can’t feel his hands. Not anymore.

And he’s scared.

[the whispers are gone]

And he’s breathing.

[but for how much longer]

And he’s singing to himself a song his mother used to sing him years ago, but he doesn’t remember the words [or her voice], so it’s coming out all wrong, and there’s more dust coming down his face, into his eyes. 

[more blood dripping down]

*

Plagg looks on from the shadows.

A huddled puddle. A pile of molars and matchsticks. The stickiness of old gum between his fangs. Rubber burning. Cold alcohol on an open wound. 

He should look away from his smouldering car wreck of a kid.

But, he doesn’t.

He stares.

The kid should know he isn’t going to help. That he  _ can’t _ help. Even if he wanted to.

[and he doesn’t want to]

Claws made of mist tangling his whiskers. A great big bottomless pit. Toxic fumes pluming from a serpent’s open mouth. A ruptured organ filled with rocks.

Plagg groans in disappointment at himself [because, once, he tore species to unsalvageable shreds with a single touch and now he bothers himself with  _ repulsive feelings _ ] and floats over against his better judgement. 

“Ladybug will be here soon.” He says, in a gruff tone, “So there’s nothing to worry about.” Adrien looks up, pin-streak bottle-green-glass eyes reflecting sorrow like broken windows, “Besides, even if you do kick the bucket, you got to spend your last moments with me.” 

Adrien laughs.

[A mutionious, languid emotion slithers up Plagg’s spine. He pretends it is not there.]

*

Ladybug finds him and it takes her only a few seconds to realize that the dried blood caked on the floor is Chat’s - even if his body is whole again (“Thanks to her.”), and she cries. Her tears stain the floor and Chat’s shoulder blades. 

“You’re the best friend I’ve ever had,” Chat says, hugging her as she weeps about how  _ sorry  _ she is, how she’s such a  _ failure to let this happen, _ “so don’t say that.”

[ _ friend  _ \- and yet, it doesn’t feel like a defeat at all. It feels like the greatest victory of them all, to know her. It is enough. It’s enough. It’ll be enough for the rest of his damn life.]

He looks at her, and sees summertime and junebugs and orange-slices [and anxieties, the whispers seethe with their boiling tongues]. He sees a girl desperately trying to rub teardrops off her mask. She wears her humanity like a crown. [you wear yours like the shameful shroud it is]

There is no shame in this. Adrien retorts. There is no shame in loving one another.

She hugs him till she squeezes every last drop of ichor from his heart. And yet, he still feels full. 

“We’re a team.” He says, wiping the last tears off her cheek, “Right, bugaboo?”

“Don’t  _ call me that _ ,” she giggles, sniffling, “...yeah, we are. I’ll always have your back.”

“And I’ll always have yours.” [especially when you stick a knife in her back], “Now, come on. You’re about to detransform soon, and I, personally, am  _ starving _ , and in need of the best croissants on the planet.”

*

It goes like this: the whispers say,  _ oh, Chat, you are a futile cursed little thing, made up of snarls, and no matter how hard you try, that is fate. _

__ Plagg says:  _ kid, I don’t believe in fate, and neither should you. _ [and that’s his brand of love, as untwisted as he can get the yarn-ball mess of his heart - pity, soaked thrice in poisonous humor.]

Adrien says:  _ I am still starving and I really do want some croissants. _

*

Sometimes defying fate is easy. As easy as laughing at one of Nino’s jokes, as smiling after a match with Kagami (and getting to see her smile too), as reading one of Alya’s crazy articles, as eating one of Marinette’s macarons, as easy, as easy, as easy as living outside the cruel bars of home with his feet on the ground and head in the clouds, drawing ladybugs in the margins of his notebooks.

But, mostly, it’s hard.

Because [he’s tried] no amount of jokes can stop the horror of a Cataclysm brushing  _ too close  _ to organic matter [flesh/bone/teeth/scars/blood -  _ Plagg, I could have KILLED someone _ \- dreams/hopes/aspirations/families/friends) 

No smile after a match can match the deep ache in his jaw from nights with his face stuck in a perpetual frown, moonlight turning his pale skin into heartless alabaster. 

No story can ease the ripples that cascade outwards, the calls from the deep that revolve inside his skull until his thoughts go dizzy. 

[no meal can soothe the endless hunger]

*

“Who do you think you are?” An akuma asks him.

“I don’t know.” Chat answers, feeling pulled apart at the strings. [you are just as much as a puppet as they are] (“Do I look like some puppet-teer-er to you, kid?” Plagg snorts) He reaches inside and plucks the akuma’s heart out [a heart shaped like a empty pendant] and crushes it to dust. 

*

“Teenage angst.” Nathalie says, very primly, very coldly behind his ears.

“Hardly.” he says, “I’m just...tired. That’s it. Nothing serious.”

[tired of you and my father speaking so quietly behind closed doors i can’t hear you two so quiet that it makes the whispers sound like bullhorns quiet enough to hide all the things you two must be doing all the things you’ll never tell me because you think i’m just a stupid kid but i’m a stupid kid who’s a superhero and why don’t you trust me father it was hard enough when mother died and now it just keeps getting harder just talk to me i want to listen i’m trying so hard when you reach out i’m reaching back even more but you act like you don’t even see me even when you look me in the eyes it’s like you’re looking at someone else and i know i know i know it’s hard without her but it’s just as hard for me why do you have to lock me out and lock me in at the same time why do you hide so much from me why don’t you just let me free that’s all i want for both of us to be happy i want you to be happy like you where before all of this what are you saying to Nathalie what are you two keeping from me i can help i promise i can help i’m not a nusiance i’m a good kid and people like me they really do i want you to like me i want you to trust me please just trust me please.]

[please.]

“Maybe you should come home earlier, if your sleep is being affected by your schedule.”

“No, it’s fine.”

“Your father said he is...concerned about your behavior.”

An empty plate. An empty table. [empty little humans]

“I am also concerned, as well-”

“You’re not my mom!” and he doesn’t mean it, but he does, the insult fits like a glove over the sleeve of his heart, “You’re not, and you’ll never be, so just…” 

The look on her face makes him feel-

“Just...shut up.”

A broken plate. A still empty table.

*

He’s grounded for two weeks.

Nathalie’s face wears the ghost of disappointment for even longer. (“Didn’t think you had the guts to do something like that!” Plagg cackles, but he stops when Adrien turns away and runs his hands through his hair.)

*

“I’m afraid I’m a bad person,” he tells Nino, on accident.

Nino, shockingly, takes it in stride, “If you think you’re a bad person, bro, then you’re not.” and Adrien blinks, “Because when you’re, like,  _ really  _ a bad person, you wouldn’t care if you were. You could pretend that you were, but, nah, I doubt you would.  _ Could _ . You’re a - uh, really bad liar. Like terrible.”

[a trick from Plagg, “Pretend you’re a bad liar, and when you really need to lie, it’ll all come together. Even if you really  _ are  _ a bad liar.]

“Anyways,” Nino finishes, lying back with his hands behind his head, “nah, you’re not a bad person. Cause you care. Or...something like that. And I mean, you’re pretty cool in my book.” he grins, all teeth, “So that definitely has to count for something.”

“Yeah, it does. You’re pretty cool too... _ bro _ .”

“Agh! Don’t say that. It’s just wrong when you say it.”

“When I say  _ what,  _ bro?”

“Okay, I take it back, you  _ are  _ a bad person.”

Adrien laughs. Nino laughs. Plagg [doesn’t] smile, not even a little bit.

*

The whispers are not all bad.

Not always.

Not all the time.

Sometimes they guide him. They turn him away from danger. They tell him to run, to jump a little higher, to move a little quicker. They whisper, but their intentions ring clear.  _ Hide. Turn. Punch. Tear. Stop.  _ They are simple, and in his decidedly not simple life, it’s like a breath of fresh air [but you still are underground, rotting to druxy and shame].

Sometimes, they tell him stories, in his bad dreams. About how they lived, how they died, how they looked at their Lady and for a blessed moment, fate fizzled to nothingness in the palm of their weathered hands.

[and she could never love us enough to save us, we could never love her enough to save her] and there is a  _ but _ , attached to the end, a love letter never sent, a glance cut short, a kiss stopped by sudden thunder.

[we were made to end, not mend. That we can’t change.] they say, on the worst days, [you are a useless horrendous thing. We all are. But we are the same. And we are together. It will never be enough. But it’s something.]

“Something is better than nothing,” Adrien says.

“You guys aren’t half-bad when you’re not telling ghost stories,” Chat laughs.

(“Stop trying to play nice with the creeps.” Plagg warns, “They’re dead for a reason, kid. And if you don’t want to end up like them, you better not listen to them.)

But Adrien, bless his heart [Chat, save his soul] is too kind [is too willing to break the rules]. He does listen. 

So the whispers sing to him.

[and sometimes, they sound like his mother.]


End file.
